Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh
24–28 April, 10am–5pm, free.
I have been helping to organise a joint exhibition by my old friend Ann Campbell and Rob Bruce. Rob is my husband and, if you are a regular reader of my blog, you will be familiar with his photographs.
This is the second exhibition Ann and Rob have held – the first was in December 2023. It is a pleasure to see how their work has changed and developed since then, as they have both been able to devote a bit more time to their art. This exhibition also includes some works by fine art photographer Fiona Young, a friend and neighbour of Ann’s.
The exhibition is a chance to get the work off phone screens and laptops and hang it on the walls of the Dundas Street Gallery, in Edinburgh’s New Town, which belongs to the Scottish Fine Art Society. It will also be a pleasure to share the work and to talk about the places that inspired it with any of you who find time to drop by.
Ann Campbell
Ann focuses on painting places and landscapes she loves and responds to emotionally. She also enjoys making still lifes, where she can explore colour and shape on a smaller scale.
At that first show, Ann sold out her paintings. This new collection of 18 works, mostly created over the autumn and winter of 2025/26, explores the dramatic scenery and atmospheric light of the Highlands, especially around the Isle of Lismore, in the Inner Hebrides.
Ann has a background in climbing and mountaineering and has travelled widely, exploring landscapes across on her bike and on foot ( I wrote about an epic bike journey aross Europe here) Ann has always drawn and sketched, especially on her travels. But she didn’t take up painting seriously until her 50s, during a stay with her sister Alison in Canada. Since retiring a year ago , she has been able to bring her full attention to developing her own creativity.
For many years, Ann was a Support for Learning teacher at Edinburgh’s James Gillespie’s High School. She also led the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme, introducing many young people to the outdoors. Ann worked to make the programme more inclusive – for example, by bringing aspects of it, like learning a new skill, into the classroom.
Ann comes from a creative family. She is one of four sisters, and their late mother, Marjorie Campbell, was a lifelong artist whose work as a painter, illustrator and designer was celebrated in a retrospective at Dundas Street Gallery in 2021.
The family spent their holidays as children in a cottage on Lismore, Lios Mòr in Gaelic meaning Great Garden, where their ancestors came from. Ann continued the tradition by taking her two sons there and now she lives there for half the year, sharing it with her sister, the musician Mairi Campbell. Their youngest sister, Sarah, lives on the island full-time, where she runs art retreats on her croft.
Rob Bruce
Rob is also an outdoor enthusiast. He generally takes his photos while high on a mountainside or out on the sea in a kayak. Many in this collection were taken in the North West Highlands. Rob lives nearby to three of Scotland’s most iconic mountains: Liathach, Ben Alligin, and Beinn Eighe, and he also often goes to other areas such as the Cairngorms, Glencoe and the islands.
Recently, Rob has started using a drone, which he says has given him a “giant’s eye view” of the landscape – showing the perspective you would see if you were ten feet tall.
Some of the art of photography lies in the editing, selecting the best angle and crop. This is an aspect of the craft which Rob, who has a long background in technology, enjoys. There are also choices over how to display the work as a physical object. Last time, Rob showed the photos as aluminium prints; this time, he is using a mixture of that and a more traditional Giclee print with frames.
Rob has built a successful career in sales and marketing, but, as a result, his time to explore has often been limited. Rob started his working life in Aberdeen before moving to London. Then, for 15 years, while our three children were young, he was a WILLIE – works in London, lives in Edinburgh. In 2015, Rob moved to the USA to help grow the UK professional services automation vendor Kimble into the US market.
In 2020, upon returning to Scotland, Rob moved to the North West Highlands. During the pandemic, while working remotely as a consultant, he rediscovered a love of photography, which began when he was a schoolboy.
Since the last exhibition, Rob has continued to develop his work while working from home and making frequent trips to London on the Caledonian Sleeper – travel by train offers plenty of time for curating and editing his images.
Fiona Young
Fiona is an award-winning artist who trained at Edinburgh College of Art and the Scottish College of Textiles – read more about her here. She will be showing some of her plant portrait series, inspired by Dutch 17th-century still lifes.
A different series by Fiona is currently on display in Inverleith House at Edinburgh’s Botanics, as part of an exhibition called Earth Matters, which celebrates the tercentenary of the birth of the geologist James Hutton.
Please drop in if you can – 10 am to 5pm each day from Friday April 24 to Tuesday 28.
